380 CHARACTER OF COLUMBUS. 



rious and adventurous spirit of his age. The labor which 

 he spent upon the construction of maps and charts, in 

 particular, may be inferred from the fact that he sup- 

 ported himself and his family for several years in Lisbon, 

 by this very art ; and on two or three other occasions 

 during his long and eventful life, he resorted to the same 

 resource. This skill and science he may have acquired, 

 to a small extesit, during the short period which he pass- 

 ed at school. But there he could have learned only the 

 rudiments. He must have matured and multiplied them 

 in his mind, as well as acquired the necessary manual 

 dexterity, by devoting to these pursuits the leisure mo- 

 ments of his naval life in the Mediterranean, few and far 

 between as they certainly were. He was fortunate, we 

 have no right to say sagacious, enough to marry at Lisbon 

 the daughter of a celebrated Italian voyager, whose 

 plans, projects and documents constituted, with the ex- 

 planations of his wife and her mother, both the recrea* 

 tion and labor of years. He embraced every occasion, 

 meanwhile, to obtain information from every living source 

 within his reach. He went to reside upon the newly 

 discovered island of Porto Santo, for a time, that he 

 might be in the way of the African navigators, who 

 touched and sometimes tarried there on their voyages to 

 and fro. 



How rare, and how meritorious accordingly, was a 

 skill like that of Columbus in the construction of charts, 

 is evident from the distinction which Mauro, an Italian 

 friar, obtained, from having projected a universal map, 

 considered the most accurate of the time : a fac-sirnile 

 of which map is now deposited in the British Museum 

 at London. The Venetians struck a medal in honor of 

 Mauro, on which they entitled him the Incomparabale 

 Cosmographer. Americus Vespucius, from whom this 

 continent has derived its name, paid 130 ducats, 

 equivalent to 555 dollars of our coin, for a map of sea 

 and land, made by Gabriel de Valseca, in 1439. 



Nor did these attainments alone occupy the entire 

 time of Columbus. The idea of his theory of the undis- 

 covered western world, which must have occurred to him 

 early in the course of his geographical reading, never 



